(No) Mud, Sweat & Beers - Glastonbury 2019

Last Monday morning, with a van packed to bursting point, we made our way to the world's biggest musical festival, Glastonbury. If you're a regular reader you'll know that Jon and I have gone for years but this time, for the first time ever, we were trading there.

We were sited quickly and to our absolute delight and amazement discovered that our pitch was directly opposite the bandstand on William's Green, with its eclectic line-up, its one of our favourite places to chill out when we're there. Despite having done a trial run in the garden it still took us an absolute age to set-up, not helped by the distraction of fellow festival traders we hadn't seen since last summer and the arrival of some of our long time Glasto gang who I'm sure you'll recognise from previous posts (such as HERE and HERE) including Lily who's been with us since she was a bump (and now has a better festival wardrobe than us grown-ups).

By the time we'd finally set the pitch up to our satisfaction we'd already made a few sales to fellow traders. Happy with how it looked and accompanied by friends Kate and David of Suay, who we'd bonded with at the Larmer Tree Festival last year, we headed up to the Stone Circle with a bag full of booze and watched a magnificent sunset. The Glastonbury gates open to the 180,000 ticket holders at 8am on Wednesday morning but with 30,000 traders, workers and volunteers on site it was already buzzing. Later we joined the Glasto gang and sat in a secret workers' bar and chatted the rest of the evening away.

We'd been avidly following the BBC weather for a fortnight and the forecast had changed daily. As usual my Facebook feed was full of posts written by acquaintances predicting that Glastonbury 2019 would be a wash out, a mud bath and hell on earth and how pleased they were that they weren't going - I can't quite get my head round why people who've never been to the festival hate it so much, I've been known to unfriend people over their constant Glasto bashing. We've been to Glastonbury in all weathers and had a blast regardless. But that's by the wayside, after some rain on Monday & Tuesday night the weather was absolutely glorious with the thermometer in our awning registering 43° by Saturday afternoon. I only wore boots to walk between stages, the rest of the week I was barefoot.

Did I mention the eclecticism of the bandstand area? We were treated to all manner of crazy performances and amazing music.

Glastonbury regulars had warned us that trade wasn't a guaranteed moneymaker as there's literally hundreds of traders and the site is vast (220,000 people crammed into 11 acres). To be totally honest we were just happy to be there and if we covered the cost of our pitch we'd be more than satisfied but by close of play on Thursday we were in profit. We were lucky to have Lily at hand to tot up our takings every night.

With the weather forecast being so unpredictable both of us only packed one summery outfit each - all but one of my dresses had sleeves. Jon loves this 1960s leisure shirt I bought from my friend Mel at Moseley Vintage Fair last year so much he was happy to wear it on repeat.

Friday was a scorcher!

Fusing hip-hop with opera, London-based HipHopera band Josephine & The Artizans were incredible.

 After we'd packed up the shop for the night we went out with Kate, David and their friend Nicole to see Tame Impala play the Other Stage and then on to Carl Cox's DJ set at Arcadia (a-m-a-z-i-n-g!) and despite being out till the early hours we didn't need a coat the entire night.

If we thought Friday was hot then Saturday was insane. By 7am many of the campers in the trader campsite had crawled out of their tents to snooze in the open air. We spent much of the day encouraging tipsy teenagers to drink water and fanning passers-by with paper plates. Trade was understandably quiet as who in their right minds wants to shop in extreme heat? However just after 7pm the temperature dropped dramatically and for two hours we were inundated by shivering festival goers demanding coats, jumpers and jackets.

I was so grateful that I'd packed those breezy sleeves.

Jon and I saw The Killers countless times in the noughties but in recent years we seemed to lose our love for them but as Stuart, Kim, Lily, Flip & Cat fancied seeing them play the Pyramid Stage we decided to give the Chemical Brothers a miss and join them instead. I'm so glad we did, they were phenomenal. When the Pet Shop Boys joined them we were already excited by when Johnny f*ckin' Marr came on stage to perform This Charming Man I nearly died of joy.

Apart from last Monday there wasn't a night when we went to bed before 2am but still managed to be up, fed, dressed and open by 10am. 

Here's just a few of the gorgeous Glasto-goers who bought our clobber. We got so much positive feedback about the quality of our "proper vintage" stock, how it was obvious that it was all hand-picked and not bought wholesale, how beautifully clean and well presented it was and what a pleasure it was to visit our shop I was almost starting to get big-headed.

On Sunday night we closed up and caught The Cure take the Pyramid Stage by storm. Jon had last seen them in 1984 but, despite being a fan back in the day, I never had although I've still got all my Cure vinyl in the shed. What can I say? Robert Smith is so sweet and endearing and his voice is just as gorgeous as it was when I was in the sixth form although Lily was disappointed that they didn't play The Love Cats.

Several people around us commented on our positive energy and asked if we were a family. We are in a way, a happy festival family that meet just once a year at Worthy Farm and spend many happy hours together over a (very) long weekend.

Despite another late night - its so good having a big shop that the gang can chill out in at night as opposed to whispering & shivering into the early hours on the campsite - we were open at 10am on Monday morning to catch the last of the festival goers. We made a couple of sales, did some skip diving (some empty catering tins to use as planters and enough salad ingredients to keep us going for the rest of the week.) By 6pm we were all packed up and leaving no trace we made our way back to Walsall, stopped for chips & curry sauce, loaded the washing machine, watered the extremely parched plants and collapsed into bed just after midnight.

No rest yet though, we're off to the Cornbury Festival in the morning.

Come and say hello if you're there!